In a Glass Darkly
Literary Gothic in Special Collections
Brontë family manuscripts in Special Collections
Oscar Wilde in Special Collections
Twentieth century gothic: Dennis Wheatley & Sophie Hannah
Lucy Arnold, doctoral student in the School of English at the University of Leeds introduces In a Glass Darkly:
The striking title of Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 short story collection In a Glass Darkly is a misquotation of a biblical passage found in 1 Corinthians 13 in which humanity is described as encountering the world ‘through a glass darkly.’
The collection constitutes a showcase of Gothic motifs including premature burial (‘The Room in the Dragon Volante’) and the sinister double (‘Mr Justice Harbottle’).
The opening story, ‘Green Tea’, provides a compelling example of the sub-genre or the medical Gothic. Indeed, the framing device of Dr Martin Hesselius, a proto-psychiatrist of dubious efficacy lends the whole collection an aspect of the medical Gothic.
This sub-genre of the Gothic, the most well-known examples of which can be found in Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, uses medical and scientific discourse as a way of interrogating the traditional Gothic preoccupation with the suffering human body and the fragility of the flesh.
However, In a Glass Darkly is perhaps best known for the vampire tale ‘Carmilla’. Predating Bram Stoker’s Dracula by 26 years and widely anthologised, ‘Carmilla’ tells the story of Laura, a young woman who is preyed on by a female vampire. The eroticised representation of same-sex female attraction that can be found in ‘Carmilla’ emerges from a context of strict religious and sexual mores and, despite the circumspect quality of Le Fanu’s depiction, ‘Carmilla’ remains one of the early examples of lesbian relationships in literature.
Unlike Stoker’s Dracula, which is structured around the identification of, struggle with and ultimate destruction of vampiric presences, ‘Carmilla’ is defined by open-endedness and ambiguity as characters are introduced only to disappear from the narrative without explanation while Laura’s fate at the end of the tale is far from certain, typifying the occlusions that define Le Fanu’s occult collection.
